


Like Light Through Honey

by cookinguptales



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Introspection, flangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 19:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11928156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: Riku has spent too long in the dark; Sora is reintroducing him to the light.(aka the one where Sora introduces Riku to Pooh Bear.)





	Like Light Through Honey

**Author's Note:**

> One of the charity fics I wrote to benefit Texas relief efforts. (Please see my tumblr, cookinguptales, for more info.)
> 
> There's some Riku/Sora undertones to this, but it's mostly just a sweet gen story about Riku learning how to value himself again. The party was inspired by the one that was in the old Pooh cartoons, but I uh. I thought it might be better to excise the flood, all things considered.

There were days that Riku still woke up in the middle of the night, surrounded by darkness and breathing hard. Those nights, he'd grapple with a blindfold that was no longer there, expecting it to be too-familiar cloth that blocked out his sight. But it wasn't a blindfold. It wasn't that unnatural, creeping darkness that he'd made his home in until it had made its home in him. It was just the night, cool and sweet and peaceful.

Riku was still getting used to waking up in the darkness and being able to turn on the light. The light in general was something that had been startlingly, embarrassingly difficult to reacquaint himself with. It hurt his eyes with its brilliancy, and he wondered if maybe it was the darkness staining the inside of his skin that was recoiling from the heat of it.

He'd said that once to Sora, that sometimes he worried that he'd never feel at home in the light again. Sora hadn't gotten it at all, the goof. Had said something about how Riku had never left it. It was a sweet sentiment, for all that it was misguided. Sora had stuck to his guns, though, and maybe that was how they'd arrived here, right here, standing in this quiet little meadow. Maybe this was all part of Sora's grand plan to help Riku reconnect with the light.

After all, Sora'd said with that dopey grin of his, the two of them had never gotten to use their boat, so this was making up for lost time. Their dreams hadn't been canceled, just delayed a little bit. And maybe Sora and he would never get to sail into the sunset, but they could still sail into the stars.

It was an interdimensional road trip, of sorts, all masquerading under the vague excuse of "training". Riku was a Master now, and Sora wasn't about to let Riku beat him. So they'd train together. They'd travel. See a few old friends and meet a couple new ones. Thrash some Heartless and see what the two of them could teach each other after all these years.

Riku understood what wasn't being said, though. Sora could act like this was a little training party or "making up for lost time", but Riku could connect the dots. He could see that every place Sora dragged him to, every village and jungle and crooked tea party, was full of light. The two of them bathed in it like the sun, and bit by bit it had started to lose its burn.

And that brought them to where they were now, a grassy little knoll filled with all the sights and sounds of a peaceful summer. Fresh leaves and bumblebees. There was a sense of calm like music on the breeze, and he could feel it sinking into his skin and leaving peace in its wake. Riku wasn't sure he'd ever been to a place quite like it.

"What is this place?" he asked. He felt wrong-footed, almost, like a bull in a china shop. Like an interloper in someone else's story. It was the brightest place he'd ever been in his life, and he could feel himself staining the ground where he stood.

"I told you," Sora said, peering around the field as if searching for something. "It's a magical book that we fixed for Merlin."

Riku frowned. "It doesn't feel like a book." It felt like -- like a dream made real. A dream so sweet that he worried about what kind of nightmares were hidden in its shadows.

"Yeah," Sora admitted, "It's a little weird. But you don't have to look so scared, Riku. The Heartless don't come to this place."

"I'm not scared," Riku said, the words as much a reflex as anything by this point. "I'm not a baby like you." Then he paused, finally absorbing what Sora had said. "Wait, seriously? Never?"

Sora made a face at him, that same sour face he made every time Riku teased him and they both knew it was unfounded. The two of them had stared fear in the face together, hand-in-hand. Neither one of them were children, not anymore. But all he said was, "Never ever. It's safe here."

Safe. It was a concept that had seemed boring once, but now it was all Riku wanted. Safety for him. For Sora and Kairi. For all the worlds and the beauty that lived within them. Riku looked around the meadow. Beautiful places just like this. "Is it a training ground?" he asked. It would make sense to use a safe haven to practice their skills.

Sora hummed thoughtfully. "I don't think so," he said, then cocked his head to the side. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Riku asked. He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.

Sora shrugged. "There are always a lot of people to help here," he said. "That's training, too, right?"

"I guess so," Riku said. For a long time, he'd thought it was the fighting that made an adventure worthy. That made an _adventurer_ worthy. That protecting a person's body was the best thing he could ever strive to do. But he'd learned, after far too many mistakes and promises, that it was the heart that they needed to watch out for. That helping people and nurturing the light in their hearts was what they really should have been doing all along.

Sora had never needed to learn that. He'd always known. And that was why Riku was letting him drag him all around to the four corners of the universe. Sora had earned a little bit of trust.

Sora was definitely looking for someone now. He frowned to himself, then put his hands on his hips. "Pooh!" he called. "Pooh Bear! Are you out here?"

Pooh Bear? What kind of a name was that? Was Sora going around making friends with bears now? Like a duck and a mouse and a -- a whatever the heck Goofy was, like they weren't all enough?

And then there was a very small voice down and to the right. "Why hello, Sora! I see you got your Invitation for the party!"

Riku looked down and had to suppress the urge to jump. It was a bear. A very small bear. It was -- it was weirdly soft-looking, like it wasn't really a bear at all, but instead one of the stuffed bears that Kairi used to keep in her room. But unlike those, this bear was walking and talking and looking up at Sora like he'd known him all his life.

"Pooh!" Sora said, with a simple joy that Riku hadn't seen on his face in far too long. "I missed you!"

"And I missed you, Sora," Pooh said. "Do come this way; we're about to have cake and honey."

"Okay," Sora said easily. "Is it okay if my friend comes, too?"

Pooh looked up at Riku as if noticing him for the first time, but he didn't seem particularly worried about the new giant in his midst. "Of course, Sora. Any friend of yours is a friend of ours."

As Pooh started to toddle away, Riku drew up close to Sora. "Invitation?" he murmured. He wasn't aware that they'd been invited to anything.

Sora shrugged. "No idea. There's always something going on here, though," he said and smiled, all sunshine and light.

Riku's breath stoppered up in his throat. It was so damn bright here. He could feel it warm on his back like the summer sun, and it was easy. Easy. Nothing in his life had been easy, but this world, strange as it was, felt uncomplicated somehow. There was no darkness. No anger and fear. Just light lapping at his feet like the waves on their island.

So what else could he do but follow?

The two of them followed Pooh a little ways, the landscape bending and refracting around them as they went ("Pages," Sora whispered with all the confidence of a fool, and Riku couldn't help but laugh), until they came to a small clearing in the woods. There was a table there outfitted with all sorts of party decorations, and sitting around it was a menagerie of soft little friends like Pooh.

Riku looked around the table, taking stock of all the creatures. A rabbit and a piglet, an owl and a tiger, a gopher and a donkey, and sitting at the end, a kangaroo and her tiny joey. So many animals, and they all fairly glowed with happiness when they saw Sora.

"Sora!" cried the joey, hopping up in his chair. "You came!"

"We were hoping you would," the rabbit said, more sedately but no less warm. He leaned in a little and murmured, "Tigger said he mailed your Invitation, but well. _You_ know."

Riku didn't know. He didn't know at all. And usually, Riku hated not knowing things. He hated ignorance, its own form of darkness, and he hated the sins that could be born of it. He hated every stupid decision he'd ever made, and he hated feeling like the world was too big for him to ever comprehend. But he didn't feel that way here. Here everything felt marvelously small, and no one had secrets to hide. It was just bright smiles and soft fur and the scent of honey in the warm afternoon sun.

Sora just laughed and reached out to wrap his last two fingers around Riku's. "Yeah, I get it. What's the party for?" he asked.

The little pig looked up at them both with round, round eyes, and flicked a nervous little glance at Riku. But Sora's presence seemed to be steadying to him, so he ventured, "P-Pooh saved me, you see. I almost got lost."

Sora clapped Pooh Bear on the back. "Good job, Pooh! Sounds like you were a hero!"

"Oh, I don't know," Pooh said, then paused. "Yes. Yes, I was."

Sora glanced back over his shoulder to exchange a laughing little look with Riku, and Riku felt warmed right down to his toes at the familiarity of the gesture. It was silly, sure, but everything seemed a little silly in this world. In the best possible way.

Somehow, impossibly, there were two little chairs set aside for them at the end of the table. No one had known ahead of time that they were coming, Riku was sure of it, and yet the two little chairs remained. Maybe, his gut told him, this world was just like that. Deeply inviting on an almost intrinsic level.

A little like Sora, he mused, taking his (mildly uncomfortable) seat next to him.

Across from him, the kangaroo shot him a motherly look, and he felt a wistful little ache inside him. It felt like nostalgia, but for nothing he'd ever known. Not really. But mothers in storybooks looked at their children that way, and Riku found himself swallowing around a lump in his throat. "Sora," she said, "You haven't introduced us to your friend."

Sora grinned and knocked his knee against Riku's companionably. "This is Riku! He's one of my best friends in the whole world," he said. Sora glanced over at him, then smiled a little wider. "In any of the worlds."

And that was saying something, considering how easily Sora seemed to bond with anything that breathed. Riku swallowed around the lump in his throat, which had only gotten bigger. "Yeah, I've known this knucklehead since we were kids," he said. "We've had all kinds of crazy adventures."

"Adventures?" the tiger asked, sitting forward in his chair. He gave a little growl that managed to sound rapt rather than threatening. "Oh, do tell. Did the two of you ever bounce off any cliffs?"

Riku frowned. "Uh."

The tiger leaned forward even further, getting honey in his fur. "Or bounce up into any very tall trees?"

Riku was sensing a pattern. "Sure. We bounced all over the place back on our island."

The tiger gave a happy little yowl. "Splendiferous! Boy, Sora, you really know how to pick 'em."

And that, well, that was really up for debate. But Riku was unbelievably, heart-poundingly grateful that Sora _had_ picked him. Had picked him and trusted him and loved him even when he hadn't deserved it. Had taken him to all these places, introduced him to all these friends so that little by little, Riku could start to feel human again.

He did feel human again, he realized. Sitting around this tiny little table with tiny little animals, all with merry smiles on their tiny little faces, he felt amazingly human. If there was darkness in him, it was shying away in the face of the pure light that they exuded.

It felt a little like being around Sora, but if there were eight of him. If there were an entire world of him. It was warm and safe and so friendly, so utterly inviting, that Riku felt himself start to ease. The wariness that came from the constant threat of shadows. The guilt that was always a half-beat behind his heart. The worries of a thousand worlds needing a thousand saviors. The bone-deep exhaustion that had haunted him for far too long. Here, in this meadow, with this blue tablecloth brushing his lap, he felt all that start to fall away.

He'd felt this once before in the world of darkness. That world hadn't been Sora, but it had only been Sora in that world. In their world. But this time, when he shut his eyes he could still see the warmth of the sunlight painting the backs of his eyelids pink. There was no darkness here. Not in the shadows. Not in his heart. The sun didn't hurt him at all.

"We need to sing," the owl announced very officiously. "We can't have a party if we don't sing."

And even as the rest of them sang some silly song (and Sora mumbled his way through the words), Riku sneaked a bite of his cake. It was honey cake, he discovered, and it tasted like sweetness and light.

* * *

A few hours later, after the cake had been devoured and the mess had been forgotten, all of them sat outside on a great big hill and looked at the moon. Even the night sky was bright here, Riku mused.

"Forgive me," Pooh said suddenly, taking him by surprise, "but you look terribly sad. Is something the matter?"

Next to them, Riku felt Sora stiffen. And for all the sunshine in Sora's heart, for all the cheer and honey and light, Riku had seen clouds in his eyes. He'd seen the worry there, the quiet melancholy, and he knew that he'd put it there. Sora worried about him, he knew. Sora had nightmares. Sora twined their fingers together and chatted about nothing, and every heartbeat seemed to beg, _Don't go. Don't leave me again._

Was something the matter? Everything was, and nothing was. There was a vast universe full of cruelties that Riku had never imagined and darkness that he could barely comprehend, but there were simple pleasures, too. There were storybooks full of honey and friends who would never, ever let you go.

"I don't know," Riku said slowly. "Nights like tonight, everything feels so peaceful. But there are so many terrible things out there." He swallowed, tapped his own chest. "And terrible things in here. And it makes me feel like maybe I don't deserve this peace. I don't deserve..." Any of it. The calm or the magic or the honey. The friendship or the trust or the love. Maybe he didn't deserve happiness at all.

Pooh blinked at him, looking confused. "But Riku, how does one 'deserve' peace?" he asked.

Sora sighed, and Riku could see him making that damn face again in the moonlight. "Yeah, Riku. How does that work?"

Sora was making fun of him, he knew. Pooh, he wasn't so sure about. "I don't know..." he muttered.

"I do," Sora said, and he looked over at Riku then, far more solemn than he ever should have been. "No one _deserves_ peace, Riku. We just do our best to keep things peaceful -- and then everyone can enjoy it. Me, you, Kairi. We're all fighting so everyone can have this all the time. Right?"

Riku huffed out a laugh, knowing when he'd been trapped. "I guess so. I guess if we fix this mess, it'll mean peace for everyone, huh?" Even the people who didn't deserve it. The people who'd sown havoc and laughed as all the worlds burned.

"Everyone deserves peace," Sora said, and he scooted a little closer. "And you're working hard to give it to them. So you deserve it, too, Riku. You gotta give yourself a break sometimes."

"And is that what this is?" Riku asked. "A break?"

Sora finally smiled, and something seemed to slot into place inside Riku as he watched. "Nah. This is just playing hooky. We'll start training again tomorrow," he said.

Sora didn't sound like he was lying -- and Sora really was a truly terrible liar -- but Riku knew he wasn't telling the whole truth, either. Sora was training him. But it wasn't for the fight. Sora was training him to live in the peaceful times again. Was training him to fight off the whispers in the back of his mind that told him that he'd destroyed everything, that his soul could never be clean again. Sora was training him to enjoy the peace that they would one day ensure for everyone. Riku swallowed. They'd have it again one day. Their carefree island. Their unbroken ties. Nights without a single nightmare to wake up from, disoriented and reaching for a blindfold that no longer existed.

"Sure," Riku said, and sat back in the grass to stare up at the light of the moon. "Whatever you say."

Pooh looked between the two of them, his brow knitted up in confusion. "But you will come back, won't you? To come visit? We've become such good friends."

"Yeah, of course." Whenever he needed a break. Because there was something about the light of this world that was soothing rather than stingingly bright. There was something kind and familiar, like the innocence of childhood and the unerring knowledge that nothing could be broken and no permanent mistakes could be made. It was a healing light, like sunlight through honey, and he could feel it like a balm on his soul.

Riku took Pooh's paw in one hand and Sora's hand in the other, and he felt the darkness start to dissipate beneath his skin.


End file.
